One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."

Professor William Black says the mainstream media has failed to explain the ordinary Greek's experience of austerity policy - January 30, 2015http://youtu.be/rWkKQvy-TMY

Bio .William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.

Paul Craig Roberts – EU And Banksters Threaten: “Defy Us And We Will Destroy You”

As the West stares into
the great abyss and the world prepares for even greater economic
turmoil, today Dr. Paul Craig Roberts warned King World News that the EU
and banksters are now threatening: "Defy us and we will destroy you."
This is an ominous warning from the former U.S. Treasury official as
the world prepares to descend into total chaos.

January 29 (King World News) – We
will find out the answer to the question posed in the title in the
outcome of the contest between the new Greek government, formed by the
political party Syriza, and the ECB and the private banks, with whose
interests the EU and Washington align against Greece.

The Spartans, whose red cloaks and
military prowess struck fear into the hearts of both foreign invaders
and Greek opponents in the city-states, are no more. Athens itself is a
ruin of its historical self. The Greeks, who were once to be contended
with, who were able with 300 Spartans, supplemented with a few thousand
Corinthians, Thebans, and other warriors, to stop a one hundred thousand
man Persian army at Thermopylae, with the final outcome being the
defeat of the Persian fleet in the Battle of Salamis and the defeat of
the Persian army in the Battle of Plataea, are no more.

The Greeks of history have become a
people of legend. Not even the Romans were able to conquer Persia, but
little more than a handful of Greeks stopped the attempted Persian
conquest of Greece.

But the Greeks, despite their glorious
history, could not stop their conquest by the EU and a handful of German
and Dutch banks. If the Greece of history still existed, the EU and the
private banks would be cowering in fear, because the EU and the private
banks have ruthlessly exploited the Greek people and represent the same
threat to Greek sovereignty as Persia did.

Greece, stripped of its independence by
its EU membership and acceptance of the euro as its currency, has lost
is sovereignty. Without control over its own money, Greece cannot
finance itself. Greece must rely on private banks from other countries.
In the 21st century European private banks are not allowed to lose money
simply because they are incompetent and over-lent to EU member
countries. This is not considered to be the fault of the banks, but of
the borrower governments and populations.

Goldman Sachs Strikes Again

According to reports, the American
bankster firm, Goldman Sachs, sometimes known as Gold Sacks, hid Greek
debt from view in order that banks would extent more credit to Greece,
thus setting the Greek people up for looting.

The EU’s disingenuous argument is that
this bankster trickery benefitted the Greek people. The people enjoyed
the resources from these loans. Therefore, the Greek people must pay
back the loans through reductions in old age pensions, through
unemployment, through lower wages, and through the sale of Greek
national assets.

This is the austerity that has been imposed on ordinary Greek people by the EU and Greece’s creditors.

Greece is prostrate. Greeks are
actually committing suicide, because Greeks cannot provide for
themselves in the depressed conditions that the EU and the private banks
have created for them for no other reason than that the private banks
must not have to write down the loans.

Greek Suicide As Banksters Loot The World

So, one result from “democracy” in
Greece is suicide. With enough democracy, we can control world
population and halt the destruction of nature’s capital. All we have to
do is to enable the banksters to loot the entire world.

What can Syriza do?

Without Spartans, very little.

The party’s intentions and that of its
leaders are honest and deserve our respect. Syriza is a people’s party,
and that is what marks it for doom. The voice of the people is no longer
permitted to affect politics in the Western world. The powerful rich
interest groups that rule the West could not care less about the people
over whom they rule.

Tsipras stated that the new Greek
government does not intend a “catastrophic clash” with its creditors,
only an acceptable amelioration of the unreasonable conditions imposed
on Greece, in order that Greece can give some satisfaction to its
private bank creditors and also avoid social, political and economic
instability in Greece.

Against this reasonable statement,
Bloomberg reports that the new Greek cabinet contains communists who
favor closer ties with Russia. To remind the newly elected Greek
government of the whip that is held over Greek financial markets, Greek
bond and stock prices were assaulted and driven down.

"Defy Us And We Will Destroy You"

The warning from the EU and Wall Street is clear: Defy us and we will destroy you.

The punishment of the new Greek government was instant. This from Bloomberg:

“Greek stocks and bonds slumped for a
third day, after new ministers said they will cease the sale of some
state assets and increase the minimum wage. Yields on three-year bonds
rose 2.66 percentage points to 16.69 percent. The benchmark Athens
General Index decreased 9.2 percent to its lowest level since 2012, led
by a collapse in the value of banks.”

Does Tsipras understand that Greek
financial institutions will continue to be punished if they stand behind
his government? Bloomberg makes it clear: “Germany warned the
Mediterranean nation against abandoning prior agreements on aid, after
analysts said that setting Greece on a collision course with its
European peers might lead to its exit from the euro region.”

Statements of newly appointed ministers
“imply confrontation and tense negotiations in the near future,”
Vangelis Karanikas, head of research at Athens-based Euroxx Securities,
wrote in a note to clients.”

Collision Course

What is Syriza’s “collusion course”?
The new government wants to moderate the agreements made by previous
Greek governments that sold out the Greek people. The new government
wants to stop giving away at bargain prices Greek public assets to
clients of its creditors, and the new Greek government wants to raise
the Greek minimum wage so that the Greek people have enough bread and
water on which to live.

However, for the private bank
creditors, for Merkel’s Germany that stands behind the banks, for
Washington which could care less about the Greeks, for the Greek elites
who see themselves as “part of Europe,” Syriza is something to be rid
of.

Greece Attacked

And so the Greek bonds are attacked,
the Greek stocks are attacked, threats are issued that arouse fear in
that part of the Greek population that is propagandized into the belief
that Greece must be part of the euro and the EU or be bypassed by
history.

What it boils down to is that the Greek
people, like the Americans, are insouciant. Only about 37% of the
voters voted for Syriza. That is far more votes than any rival party
received, but it is not enough to show Washington, the EU and creditors
that Greeks stand behind their government.

Instead it shows that the new party had
to form a government with another party that money, perhaps, can buy
off. It shows that Syriza can be demonized in the Western media and
presented to the Greek public as a threat to Greece.

The new government is aware of its
weakness. The new prime minister says that he does not want
confrontation, but that the new government cannot continue the kowtowing
of previous Greek governments. A reasonable accommodation must be
reached.

Accommodation is unlikely to occur,
because a reasonable accommodation is not the desire of Washington, the
EU, or of Greece’s creditors.

A purpose of the “Greek financial
crisis” is to establish that EU members are not sovereign countries and
that banks that lend to these non-sovereign entities are not responsible
for any losses with regard to the loans. The population of the indebted
countries are the responsible parties. And these populations must
accept the reduction of their living standards in order to ensure that
the banks do not lose any money.

Super-Rich And Serfs

This is the “New Democracy.” It is a
resurrection of the old feudal order. A few super-rich aristocrats and
everyone else serfs obliged to support the ruling order. The looting
that began in Greece has spread into Ukraine, and who knows who is next?

With only 37% of the vote, does Syriza have the clout to stand up for Greece against the looters?

Can Greece escape from a situation comparable to the European Dark Ages
when populations were ravaged by marauding raiders? Perhaps if Greece
realigns with Russia and gains financing from BRICS. ***ALSO JUST RELEASED:As Europe Disintegrates, Is Full-Scale War Now On The Horizon CLICK HERE.

Published on Jan 29, 2015The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the largest--and worst--trade deal you've never heard of and Republicans in Congress want to work with the Obama administration to "fast track" its passage.

Will you help spread the word about fast track and the TPP by watching and sharing the video right now? If so, click here.

Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.

The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack,
has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple
languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and
the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s
credit rating to junk status.

Today RT International interviewed me about these insane developments.

In prior days when America was still a sane country, Lack’s charge
would have led to him being laughed out of office. He would have had to
resign and disappear from public life. Today in the make-believe world
that Western propaganda has created, Lack’s statement is taken
seriously. Yet another terrorist threat has been identified–RT.
(Although both Boko Haram and the Islamic State employ terror, strictly
speaking they are political organizations seeking to rule, not terror
organizations, but this distinction would be over Lack’s head. Yes, I
know. There is a good joke that could be made here about what Lack
lacks. Appropriately named and all that.)

Nevertheless, whatever Lack might lack, I doubt he believes his
nonsensical statement that RT is a terrorist organization. So what is
his game?

The answer is that the Western presstitute media by becoming
Ministries of Propaganda for Washington, have created large markets for
RT, Press TV, and Al Jazeera. As more and more of the peoples of the
world turn to these more honest news sources, Washington’s ability to
fabricate self-serving explanations has declined.

RT in particular has a large Western audience. The contrast between
RT’s truthful reporting and the lies spewed by US media is undermining
Washington’s control of the explanation. This is no longer acceptable.

Lark has sent a message to RT. The message is: pull in your horns;
stop reporting differently from our line; stop contesting the facts as
Washington states them and the presstitutes report them; get on board or
else.

In other words, the “free speech” that Washington and its EU,
Canadian, and Australian puppet states tout means: free speech for
Washington’s propaganda and lies, but not for any truth. Truth is
terrorism, because truth is the major threat to Washington.

Washington would prefer to avoid the embarrassment of actually
shutting down RT as its UK vassal did to Press TV. Washington simply
wants to shut up RT. Lark’s message to RT is: self-censure.

In my opinion, RT already understates in its coverage and reporting
as does Al Jazeera. Both news organizations understand that they cannot
be too forthright, at least not too often or on too many occasions.

I have often wondered why the Russian government allows 20 percent of
the Russian media to function as Washington’s fifth column inside
Russia. I suspect the reason is that by tolerating Washington’s blatant
propaganda inside Russia, the Russian government hopes that some
factual news can be reported in the US via RT and other Russian news
organizations.

These hopes, like other Russian hopes about the West, are likely to
be disappointed in the end. If RT is closed down or assimilated into
the Western presstitute media, nothing will be said about it, but if the
Russian government closes down Washington’s agents, blatant liars all,
in the Russian media, we will hear forever about the evil Russians
suppressing “free speech.” Remember, the only allowable “free speech”
is Washington’s propaganda.

Only time will tell whether RT decides to be closed down for telling
the truth or whether it adds its voice to Washington’s propaganda.

The other item in the interview was the downgrading of Russian credit to junk status.

Standard and Poor’s downgrade is, without any doubt, a political act.
It proves what we already know, and that is that the American rating
firms are corrupt political operations. Remember the Investment Grade
rating the American rating agencies gave to obvious subprime junk?
These rating agencies are paid by Wall Street, and like Wall Street they
serve the US government.

A look at the facts serves to establish the political nature of the
ruling. Don’t expect the corrupt US financial press to look at the
facts. But right now, we will look at the facts.

Indeed, we will put the facts in context with the US debt situation.

According to the debt clocks available online, the Russian national
debt as a percentage of Russian GDP is 11 percent. The American
national debt as a percentage of US GDP is 105 percent, about ten times
higher. My coauthors, Dave Kranzler, John Williams, and I have shown
that when measured correctly, the US debt as a percent of GDP is much
higher than the official figure.

The Russian national debt per capita is $1,645. The US national debt per capita is
$56,952.

The size of Russia’s national debt is $235 billion, less than one
quarter of a trillion. The size of the US national debt is $18 trillion, 76.6 times larger than the Russian debt.

Putting this in perspective: according to the debt clocks, US GDP is
$17.3 trillion and Russian GDP is $2.1 trillion. So, US GDP is 8 times
greater than Russian GDP, but US national debt is 76.6 times greater
than Russia’s debt.

Clearly, it is the US credit rating that should have been downgraded
to junk status. But this cannot happen. Any US credit rating agency
that told the truth would be closed and prosecuted. It wouldn’t matter
what the absurd charges are. The rating agencies would be guilty of
being anti-American, terrorist organizations like RT, etc. and so on,
and they know it. Never expect any truth from any Wall Street denizen.
They lie for a living.

As Russia has enough US dollar holdings to redeem its entire national
debt and have a couple hundred billion dollars left, what is Russia’s
problem?

One of Russia’s problems is its central bank. For the most part,
Russian economists are the same neoliberal incompetents that exist in
the Western world. The Russian economists are enamored of their
contacts with the “superior” West and with the prestige that they image
these contacts give them. As long as the Russian economists agree with
the Western ones, they get invited to conferences abroad. These Russian
economists are de facto American agents whether they realize it or not.

Currently, the Russian central bank is squandering the large Russian
holdings of foreign reserves in support of the Western attack on the
ruble. This is a fools’ game that no central bank should play. The
Russian central bank should remember, or learn if it does not know,
Soros’ attack on the Bank of England.

Russian foreign reserves should be used to retire the outstanding
national debt, thus making Russia the only country in the world without a
national debt. The remaining dollars should be dumped in coordinated
actions with China to destroy the dollar, the power basis of American
Imperialism.

Alternatively, the Russian government should announce that its reply
to the economic warfare being conducted against Russia by the government
in Washington and Wall Street rating agencies is default on its loans
to Western creditors. Russia has nothing to lose as Russia is already
cut off from Western credit by US sanctions. Russian default would
cause consternation and crisis in the European banking system, which is
exactly what Russia wants in order to break up Europe’s support of US
sanctions.

In my opinion, the neoliberal economists who control Russian economic
policy are a much greater threat to the sovereignty of Russia than
economic sanctions and US missile bases. To survive Washington, Russia
desperately needs people who are not romantic about the West.

To dramatize the situation, if President Putin will grant me Russian
citizenship and allow me to appoint Michael Hudson and Nomi Prins as my
deputies, I will take over the operation of the Russian central bank and
put the West out of operation.

But that would require Russia taking risks associated with victory.
The Atlanticist Integrationists inside the Russian government want
victory for the West, not for Russia. A country imbued with treason
inside the government itself has reduced chance against Washington, a
determined player.

Another fifth column operating against Russia from within are the US
and German funded NGOs. These American agents masquerade as “human
rights organizations,” as “women’s rights organizations,” as “democracy
organizations,” and whatever other cant titles that serve in a
politically correct age and are unchallengeable.

Yet another threat to Russia comes from the percentage of the Russian
youth who lust for the depraved culture of the West. Sexual license,
pornography, drugs, self-absorption. These are the West’s cultural
offerings. And, of course, killing Muslims.

If Russians want to kill people for the fun of it and to solidify US
hegemony over themselves and the world, they should support “Atlanticist
integration” and turn their backs on Russian nationalism. Why be
Russian if you can be American serfs?

What better result for the American neoconservatives than to have
Russia support Washington’s hegemony over the world? That is what the
neoliberal Russian economists and the “European Integrationists”
support. These Russians are willing to be American serfs in order to be
part of the West and to be paid well for their treason.

As I was interviewed about these developments by RT, the news anchor
kept trying to confront Washington’s charges with the facts. It is
astonishing that the Russian journalists do not understand that facts
have nothing to do with it. The Russian journalists, those independent
of American bribes, think that facts matter in the disputes about
Russian actions. They think that the assaults on civilians by the
American supported Ukrainian Nazis is a fact. But, of course no such
fact exists in the Western media. In the Western media the Russians,
and only the Russians, are responsible for violence in Ukraine.

Washington’s story line is that it is the evil Putin’s intent on
restoring the Soviet Empire that is the cause of the conflict. This
media line in the West has no relationship to any facts.

In my opinion, Russia is in grave danger. Russians are relying on
facts, and Washington is relying on propaganda. For Washington, facts
are not relevant. Russian voices are small compared to Western voices.

The lack of a Russian voice is due to Russia itself. Russia accepted
living in a world controlled by US financial, legal, and
telecommunication services. Living in this world means that the only
voice is Washington’s.

Why Russia agreed to this strategic disadvantage is a mystery. But
as a result of this strategic mistake, Russia is at a disadvantage.

Considering the inroads that Washington has into the Russian
government itself, the economically powerful oligarchs and state
employees with Western connections, as well as into the Russian media
and Russian youth, with the hundreds of American and German financed
NGOs that can put Russians into the streets to protest any defense of
Russia, Russia’s future as a sovereign country is in doubt.

The American neoconservatives are relentless. Their Russian opponent
is weakened by the success inside Russia of Western cold war propaganda
that portrays the US as the savior and future of mankind.

When the former Goldman Sachs executive who runs the European Central
Bank (ECB) announced that he was going to print 720 billion euros
annually with which to purchase bad debts from the politically connected
big banks, the euro sank and the stock market and Swiss franc shot up.
As in the US, quantitative easing (QE) serves to enrich the already
rich. It has no other purpose.

The well-heeled financial institutions that bought up the troubled
sovereign debt of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain at low prices will
now sell the bonds to the ECB for high prices. And despite depression
level unemployment in most of Europe and austerity imposed on citizens,
the stock market rose in anticipation that much of the 60 billion new
euros that will be created each month will find its way into equity
prices. Liquidity fuels the stock market.

Where else can the money to go? Some will go into Swiss francs and
some into gold while gold is still available, but for the most part the
ECB is running the printing press in order to boost the wealth of the
stock-owning One Percent. The Federal Reserve and the ECB have taken
the West back to the days when a handful of aristocrats owned
everything.

The stock markets are bubbles blown by central bank money creation.
On the basis of traditional reasoning there is no sound reason to be in
equities, and sound investors have avoided them.

But there is no return anywhere else, and as the central banks are
run by the rich for the rich, sound reasoning has proved to be a mistake
for the past six years. This shows that corruption can prevail for an
indeterminable period over fundamentals.

As I demonstrated in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism,
first Goldman Sachs deceived lenders into over-lending to the Greek
government. Then Goldman Sachs former executives took over Greece’s
financial affairs and forced austerity upon the population in order to
prevent losses to the foreign lenders.

This established a new principle in Europe, one that the IMF has
relentlessly applied to Latin American and Third World debtors. The
principle is that when foreign lenders make mistakes and over-lend to
foreign governments, loading them up with debt, the bankers’ mistakes
are rectified by robbing the poor populations. Pensions, social
services, and public employment are cut, valuable resources are sold off
to foreigners for pennies on the dollar, and the government is forced
to support US foreign policy. John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
describes the process perfectly. If you haven’t read Perkins book, you
have little idea how corrupt and vicious the United States is. Indeed,
Perkins shows that over-lending is intentional in order to set up the
country for looting.

This is what Goldman Sachs did to Greece, intentionally or unintentionally.

It took the Greeks a long time to realize it. Apparently, 36.5
percent of the population was awoken by rising poverty, unemployment,
and suicide rates. That figure, a little over one-third of the vote,
was enough to put Syriza in power in the just concluded Greek election,
throwing out the corrupt New Democracy party that has consistently sold
out the Greek people to the foreign banks. Nevertheless, 27.7 percent
of the Greeks, if the vote reporting is correct, voted for the party
that has sacrificed the Greek people to the banksters. Even in Greece, a
country accustomed to outpourings of people into the streets, a
significant percentage of the population is sufficiently brainwashed to
vote against their own interests.

Can Syriza do anything? It remains to be seen, but probably not. If
the political party had received 55% or 65% or 75% of the vote, yes.
But the largest vote at 36.5% does not show a unified country aware of
its plight and its looting at the hands of rich banksters. The vote
shows that a significant percentage of the Greek population supports
foreign looting of Greece.

Moreover, Syriza is up against the heavies: the German and
Netherlands banks who hold Greece’s loans and the governments that back
the banks, the European Union which is using the sovereign debt crisis
to destroy the sovereignty of the individual countries that comprise the
European Union, Washington which backs EU sovereign power over the
individual countries as it is easier to control one government than a
couple of dozen.

Already the Western financial presstitutes are warning Syriza not to
endanger its membership in the common currency by diverting from the
austerity model imposed from abroad on Greek citizens with the
complicity of New Democracy.

Apparently, there is a lack of formal means of exiting the EU and the
euro, but nevertheless Greece can be threatened with being thrown out.
Greece should welcome being thrown out.

Exiting the EU and the euro is the best thing that can happen to
Greece. A country without its own currency is not a sovereign country.
It is a vassal state of another power. A country without its own
currency cannot finance its own needs. Although the UK is a member of
the EU, the UK kept its own currency and is not subject to control by
the ECB. A country without its own money is powerless. It is a
non-entity.

If the US did not have its own dollar, the US would be of no consequence whatsoever on the world scene.

The EU and the euro were deception and trickery. Countries lost their
sovereignty. So much for Western “self-rule,” “freedom,” “democracy,”
all slogans without content. In the entire West there is nothing but
the looting of people by the One Percent who control the governments.

In America, the looting does not rely on indebtedness, because the US
dollar is the reserve currency and the US can print all the money
needed in order to pay its bills and redeem its debt. In America the
looting of labor has been through jobs offshoring.

American corporations discovered, and if they did not they were
informed by Wall Street to move offshore or be taken over, that they
could raise profits by moving their manufacturing operations abroad. The
lower labor cost resulted in higher profits, higher share prices, huge
managerial bonuses based on “performance,” and shareholder capital
gains. Offshoring greatly increased the inequality in income and wealth
in the US. Capital succeeded in looting labor.

The displaced well-paid manufacturing workers, if they were able to
find replacement jobs, worked part-time minimum wage jobs at Walmart and
Home Depot.

Economists, if they are entitled to the designation, such as Michael
Porter and Matthew Slaughter, promised Americans that the fictional “New
Economy” would produce better, higher-paying, and cleaner jobs for
Americans than the “dirty fingernail” jobs that we were fortunate our
corporations were moving offshore.

Years later, as I have proven conclusively, there is no sign of these
“New Economy” jobs. What we have instead is a sharp decline in the
labor force participation rate as the unemployed cannot find jobs. The
replacement jobs for the manufacturing jobs are mainly part-time
domestic service jobs.

People have to hold 2 or 3 of these jobs to make ends meet. These part time jobs offer no medical or pension benefits.

Now that this fact, once controversial believe it or not, has proven
completely true, the same bought-and-paid-for spokespersons for robbing
labor and destroying unions claim, without a shred of evidence, that the
offshored jobs are coming home.

There is no sign whatsoever of these alleged “reshoring” jobs in the monthly BLS payroll jobs statistics.

What reshoring is all about is propaganda to counteract the belated
realization that “free trade” agreements and job offshoring were not
beneficial to the American economy or its work force, but were
beneficial only to the super-rich.

Like people throughout history, the American people are being turned
into serfs and slaves because the fools believe the lies that are fed to
them. They sit in front of Fox News, CNN, and whatever. They read the
New York Times. If you want to learn how badly Americans have been
served by the so-called media, read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States.

The media helps the government, and the private interests that profit
from their control of government, control the brainwashed public. We
have to invade Afghanistan because a faction there fighting for
political control of the country is protecting Osama bin Laden, whom the
US accuses without any proof of embarrassing the mighty US with the
9/11 attack. We have to invade Iraq because Saddam has “weapons of mass
destruction” that he surely has despite the reports to the contrary by
the weapons inspectors. We have to overthrow Gaddafi because of a slate
of lies that have best been forgotten. We have to overthrow Assad
because he used chemical weapons even though all evidence is to the
contrary. Russia is responsible for Ukraine problems, not because the
US overthrew the elected democratic government but because Russia
accepted a 97.6% vote of Crimeans to rejoin Russia where the province
had resided for hundreds of years before a Ukrainian Soviet leader,
Khrushchev, stuck Crimea into Ukraine, at the time a part of the Soviet
Union along with Russia.

War, War, War, that is all Washington wants. It enriches the
military/security complex, the largest component of the US GNP and the
largest contributor, along with Wall Street and the Israel Lobby, to US
political campaigns.

Anyone or any organization that offers truth to the lies is
demonized. Last week the new chief of the US Broadcasting Board of
Governors, Andrew Lack, listed the Russian TV Internet service Russia
Today as the equivalent of Boko Haram and the Islamic State terrorist
groups. This absurd accusation is a prelude to closing down RT in the US
just as Washington’s puppet UK government closed down Iran’s Press TV. http://rt.com/usa/225819-rt-isis-point-view-competition/

In other words, Anglo-Americans are not permitted any different news than what is served to them by “their” governments.

“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” ~Albert Einstein

January 23, 2015 "ICH"-
Imagine – a bunch of French,
CIA and Mossad special forces, one of them
or a combination of the three, attack a
racist, Moslem-insulting publisher in Paris
and a kosher supermarket at another end of
town – killing altogether 17 people,
notwithstanding the ‘suicide’ of the French
police chief in charge of investigating the
atrocity.A million and a half
people in Paris take to the streets – about
6 million throughout Europe – all screaming
or carrying posters with a maddening,
inexplicable “Je Suis Charlie” –
depicting an utterly brainwashed mindset,
brainwashed for decades with Washington
directed mind control.They do not know, do not
want to know, that the Charlie
massacre was yet another staged event,
another false flag that will eventually give
their masters green light to intensify their
‘wars on terror’ around the globe.
Terrorists are mostly Muslims; so is their
dictum. Before the massacre, the powers that
be identified three Muslims as the
perpetrators of the crime to come. Soon
after the Charlie attack, they sent killer
squads to massacre them, before anybody
could question them. The fight on terror –
don’t leave witnesses behind.The millions of
demonstrators’ war cry is literally asking
the western armies, led by NATO to turn- and
speed up their brutal killing machine in the
Middle East – to exterminate the Moslem
population.The western public has been told
and is constantly being told by the western
powers dominated main stream media
that Muslims are at the heart of all evil;
when in fact quite the contrary is true. The
West under neoliberal leadership (sic) has
become a horrifying merciless killing
machine.That’s Paris Charlie revisited
and in a nutshell. – That’s our neoliberal
‘civilization’ – with a purpose. False
flag written all over the walls of
Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemous infrastructure.
Waging even more savage war on the 1.6
billion Muslims. Killing 17 people by Empire
and its stooges, will allow Empire and its
stooges to kill more millions, perhaps tens
of millions, to exterminate this ‘evil’
Muslim sect of ‘terrorists’.
A
‘terrorist’ is anybody who doesn’t bend to
the empire’s boot.
That doctrine
has been impregnated in western minds ever
since another false flag killed on
9/11 about 3,000 people in New York,
allowing the beginning of the eternal war –
wars, one succeeding the next – the criminal
Bush-Blair legacy of the 21st
Century.The Afghanistan invasion
of empire directed NATO forces was to
control the TAPI pipeline project
(Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
India), for which the Taliban were unwilling
to negotiate with the Bush family, nor with
a secret Congressional commission in 2001.
The project is as of this day a bone of
contention – and a good reason for Obama to
leave a permanent ‘residue’ of troops in
Afghanistan.To keep a roving mindless
populace tight – local false flags,
à la Boston Marathon bombing are necessary
to intensify repression, abrogate ever more
civil liberties – and this even on demand
from the very people affected by the
repression. They want more security, more
protection.
As with Charlie Hebdo, the
bad guys were pre-identified,so that when
the secret special forces launched their
ugly plot, they were easy to trace and chase
– and kill. One of the designated
‘perpetrators’ in the Boston case and all of
them in Paris. Dead men don’t talk.The Bostonians literally
invited armed police to take over their
streets and invade their homes. In Paris the
marchers of 1.5 million people were silently
screaming, “Hollande go to war and free us
from evil! “ –
What a
depressing joke this is. It would
be laughable if it weren’t that serious. –
It is one more step won by the neoliberal
empire – a step towards full dominance and
subjugation of the populace.The Washington funded
AlQaeda-turned-Taliban-turned-AlQaeda Osama
BinLaden was made responsible for the Twin
Tower’s collapse – in no time. And in no
time, two years to be exact, the wind
shifted. Iraq’s Saddam is the culprit.
The power of the msm – in
combination with the brainless masses works
wonders.
Saddam, the newly designated
culprit of the New York 9/11 monstrosity
triggered the war on Iraq – the empire
taking over the country’s riches, her oil
wells; at that time the world’s cheapest oil
to bring to the surface – and making sure
that Saddam would not tell who
helped and incited him to wage an eight-year
war against his neighbor Iran, and who
gave him the poison to gas in 1988 the Kurds
in the North, and especially, that he would
not convert his forced dollar denominated
sales of hydrocarbons into euros, as he
unwittingly announced – he had to be
executed. He received a world stage hanging,
propaganda for justice, for American justice
– justice of the exceptional people,
supported and road-mapped, as always, by the
banking backed ‘chosen people’.
The Bush-Blair led ‘coalition
of the willing’ slaughtered more than a
million and a half Iraqis, mostly
civilians;women, children and elderly;
creating other millions of refugees.
Countless people murdered in Afghanistan. In
parallel the NED-induced (National Endowment
for Democracy) infamous machinery of ‘regime
change’ produced the so-called Arab Spring
which had nothing to do with spring, but
everything with devastating one Middle
Eastern and North African country after
another. The obliteration of Libya and Syria
through NATO bombing and NATO prompted civil
wars, and more brutal and bloody conflicts
all over Mother Earth.Obama’s personally directed
drone war on Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan,
Somalia, Syria, Turkey – and the list goes
on – is further fomenting and funding local
unrest, killing masses of defenseless
people.
It is American judgment over
nations by war.
ISIS, a US-EU-NATO creation, generously
funded by the empire and its European and
Middle Eastern stooges, as a rebel force to
fight Syrian troops and to take over Iraq,
is torturing and slaughtering in the
(concealed) name of the neocon empire, other
thousands of people.ISIS, supplied with
cutting-edge weaponry by the US and NATO, is
assailing Iraq, where George W. Bush
notoriously declared in May 2003, two months
after his shock and awe invasion,
“Mission
Accomplished”.Not to mention the
horrifying eight more years of war Iraq and
her people endured until Obama ceremoniously
announced the end of war, pulling out US
troops in 2011– not without leaving a core
presence behind, though.As Eduardo Galeano, the
famous revolutionary Uruguayan writer and
philosopher said –
once US
troops are in a country, they never leave.
Hence, the more than thousand US military
bases around the globe.Wars must go on. The US
neoliberal economy depends on them. The war
machine and its ramifications contribute
more than 50% to the US GDP.Without wars, the country
would collapse. All peace talks and
negotiations initiated or feigned by
Washington are fake, a deception, propaganda
for the goodness of the naked emperor.
Kudos for
the exceptional nation.World peace would mean a
black hole for the United States, demise.In both cases, Iraq and
Syria, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria) – the Sunni caliphate having merged
in 2013 with Syria’s al-Nusra Front – and
whatever other names the ‘rebels’ may morph
into –are paid to fight national armies
unwilling to bend. In turn, they are
justifying US interventions, bombing the
same ISIS they created, though only a little
bit, to make believe, lest ISIS might really
be wiped out. Recent US helicopter food and
ammunition drops behind ISIS Iraqi lines
testify to the west’s double standards and
deceit.In reality, when bombing
ISIS, NATO is bombing Iraq and Syria for
regime change, and as an added icing on the
cake, to grease the US war machine,
the ever
hungry military industrial complex.
Estimates have it that US
carried out and inspired wars and conflicts
around the globe have killed over ten
million people in the last decade and a
half.
That’s neoliberal
‘civilization’ – murdering 17 to kill
millions – making billions
by weapon manufacturing and
selling, plus more billions by stealing
hydrocarbon – the God of Energy of our ever
growth-lusty western greed economy; and
making even more billions by converting
small-holder agriculture which still today
feeds 80% of world population – into
pesticide-implanted genetically modified
food production, the Monsanto world.As if this destruction,
annihilation and misery of war and mass
killing were not enough,
there is
reconstruction after war, another bonanza
for the destroyer. The words of
former World Bank president, Robert Zoellick,
also known as the US neoliberal trade tsar,
will not be forgotten, when he said in the
midst of NATO devastating Libya in 2011 –
“We hope
that the World Bank will also be involved in
the reconstruction of Libya.” Well,
this wish has not come through yet, but in
other war-torn zones it has.
After destruction comes
reconstruction with all the neoliberal
strings attached,
financial robbery of public goods, reduction
of pensions, minimum wages, social services,
privatization of education and health,
expropriation and privatization of natural
resources by foreign corporations –and the
list goes on, all requisites of extreme
austerity measures as conditions for the
sacrosanct IMF, World Bank and ECBso-called
rescue packages.At times, countries whose
existence remains somehow important for the
empire, like those in Southern Europe, will
be driven into misery without physical war,
just by financial abuse and economic
slavery. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland
and even Italy, were driven to the abyss of
suffocation by the all-powerful, but
appallingly criminal troika, the IMF, ECB
and the European Commission.After coercing or
replacing their elected governments with
neoliberal puppets, mostly former Wall
Street execs, as is the President of the
ECB, they – the troika and their masters –
forced
these countries into debt, after debt and
more debt – debt that is virtually
unrecoverable in a generation; debt
that causes astronomical levels of
unemployment, Greece, Spain and Portugal,
hovering above 25% and 65% among the young
people, slashing social services, health
care, pensions, leaving a huge proportion of
their population in absolute poverty and in
physical and mental misery.
And who funds all these
atrocities – wars and financial devastation?
– Wall Street, the extended arm of the
Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled monetary
system, and its puppets, the FED, IMF, World
Bank, European Central Bank and their
subordinate European mega-banks. Naturally.–
Who else?
All of these neoliberal
mayhems are guided by the invisible hand of
the PNAC – the Plan of a New American
Century, designed by Zionist Washington
think tanks, the tail that wags the dog.
The PNAC foresees the annihilation of the
Middle East, the pocketing of Europe by
implanting puppets – done! – and finally the
encircling and eventual subjugation of
Russia and China – the ascent of a
Washington directed One World Order.
It shall not happen. There is
hope in the solid alliance of Vladimir Putin
and Xi Jinping, of Russia and China; a
strategic economic and defense pact, the
western media are silent about. The less the
public knows of the truth, the more it will
adore the ‘exceptional nation’, as its one
and only master – so goes the theory of
western self-adulation.Neoliberalism wants it
all, the supremacy of the 1% – addressing
the lowest common denominator in human kind
– greed, using the main stream media
concocting lies and deceptions to nurture
more greed which in turn is the engine that
fuels the neoliberal doctrine of private
property, of privatization of public goods,
privatization – stealing – of other
countries natural resources, the steady
pursuit of instant profit, of police and
military oppression of the few who refuse to
comply. A Win-Win-Win situation – energy,
food and money, as per Kissinger’s infamous
dogma– who controls energy controls
continents, who controls food controls
people, and who controls money controls the
world.Neoliberalism, the
religion of the West, is the epitome of
evil, of destruction of civilization
itself. Neoliberalism – thanks to its
unifying factor of greed, has ravaged the
west like brushfire and taken over the world
in less than 30 years,
a feat grander than that
achieved by mono-theistic Judo-Christianity
in over 2000 years.
Citizens of Mother Earth –
BEWARE ! – Wake up ! Open your eyes and ears
! – Become
vanguards of a new world, new values – where
the neocons and their globalization bite the
dust, and where local production for local
markets funded by local banks propels
solidarity and harmony into new generations
of mankind.

Peter Koenig is an
economist and geopolitical analyst. He is
also a former World Bank staff and worked
extensively around the world in the fields
of environment and water resources. He is
the author of Implosion: An Economic
Thriller about War, Environmental
Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction
based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank
experience around the globe.

2015 Will Be All About Iran, China and Russia

Fasten your seat belts; 2015 will be a whirlwind pitting China, Russia and Iran against what I have described as the Empire of Chaos.

So yes -- it will be all about further moves towards the
integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of
Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic interplay progressively
undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve currency and,
most of all, the petrodollar.

For
all the immense challenges the Chinese face, all over Beijing it's easy
to detect unmistakable signs of a self-assured, self-confident, fully
emerged commercial superpower. President Xi Jinping and the current
leadership will keep investing heavily in the urbanization drive and the
fight against corruption, including at the highest levels of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Internationally, the Chinese will
accelerate their overwhelming push for new "Silk Roads" -- both overland
and maritime -- which will underpin the long-term Chinese master
strategy of unifying Eurasia with trade and commerce.

Global
oil prices are bound to remain low. All bets are off on whether a
nuclear deal will be reached by this summer between Iran and the P5+1.
If sanctions (actually economic war) against Iran remain and continue to
seriously hurt its economy, Tehran's reaction will be firm, and will
include even more integration with Asia, not the West.

Washington
is well-aware that a comprehensive deal with Iran cannot be reached
without Russia's help. That would be the Obama administration's sole --
and I repeat -- sole foreign policy success. A return to the "Bomb Iran"
hysteria would only suit the proverbial usual (neo-con) suspects.
Still, by no accident, both Iran and Russia are now subject to Western
sanctions. No matter how it was engineered, the fact that stands is that
the current financial/strategic oil price collapse is a direct attack
against (who else?) Iran and Russia.

That derivative war

Now let's take a look at Russian fundamentals. Russia's government debt
totals only 13.4% of its GDP. Its budget deficit in relation to GDP is
only 0.5%. If we assume a US GDP of $16.8 trillion (the figure for
2013), the US budget deficit totals 4% of GDP, versus 0.5% for Russia.
The Fed is essentially a private corporation owned by regional US
private banks, although it passes itself off as a state institution. US
publicly held debt is equal to a whopping 74% of GDP in fiscal year
2014. Russia's is only 13.4%.

The
declaration of economic war by the US and EU on Russia -- via the run
on the ruble and the oil derivative attack -- was essentially a
derivatives racket. Derivatives -- in theory -- may be multiplied to
infinity. Derivative operators attacked both the ruble and oil prices in
order to destroy the Russian economy. The problem is, the Russian
economy is more soundly financed than America's.

Considering
that this swift move was conceived as a checkmate, Moscow's defensive
strategy was not that bad. On the key energy front, the problem remains
the West's -- not Russia's. If the EU does not buy what Gazprom has to
offer, it will collapse.

Moscow's
key mistake was to allow Russia's domestic industry to be financed by
external, dollar-denominated debt. Talk about a monster debt trap which
can be easily manipulated by the West. The first step for Moscow should
be to closely supervise its banks. Russian companies should borrow
domestically and move to sell their assets abroad. Moscow should also
consider implementing a system of currency controls so the basic
interest rate can be brought down quickly.

And
don't forget that Russia can always deploy a moratorium on debt and
interest, affecting over $600 billion. That would shake the entire
world's banking system to the core. Talk about an undisguised "message"
forcing the US/EU economic warfare to dissolve.

Russia
does not need to import any raw materials. Russia can easily
reverse-engineer virtually any imported technology if it needs to. Most
of all, Russia can generate -- from the sale of raw materials -- enough
credit in US dollars or euros. Russia's sale of its energy wealth -- or
sophisticated military gear -- may decline. However, they will bring in
the same amount of rubles -- as the ruble has also declined.

Replacing
imports with domestic Russian manufacturing makes total sense. There
will be an inevitable "adjustment" phase -- but that won't take long.
German car manufacturers, for instance, can no longer sell their cars in
Russia due to the ruble's decline. This means they will have to
relocate their factories to Russia. If they don't, Asia -- from South
Korea to China -- will blow them out of the market.

Bear and dragon on the prowl

The EU's declaration of economic war against Russia makes no sense
whatsoever. Russia controls, directly or indirectly, most of the oil and
natural gas between Russia and China: roughly 25% of the world's
supply. The Middle East is bound to remain a mess. Africa is unstable.
The EU is doing everything it can to cut itself off from its most stable
supply of hydrocarbons, prompting Moscow to redirect energy to China
and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing -- as it minimizes the
alarm about the US Navy playing with "containment" across the high seas.

Still,
an unspoken axiom in Beijing is that the Chinese remain extremely
worried about an Empire of Chaos losing more and more control, and
dictating the stormy terms of the relationship between the EU and
Russia. The bottom line is that Beijing would never allow itself to be
in a position where the US could interfere with China's energy imports
-- as was the case with Japan in July 1941 when the US declared war by
imposing an oil embargo, cutting off 92% of Japanese oil imports.

Everyone
knows a key plank of China's spectacular surge in industrial power was
the requirement for manufacturers to produce in China. If Russia did the
same, its economy would be growing at a rate of over 5% per year in no
time. It could grow even more if bank credit was tied only to productive
investment.

Now
imagine Russia and China jointly investing in a new gold, oil and
natural resource-backed monetary union as a crucial alternative to the
failed debt "democracy" model pushed by the Masters of the Universe on
Wall Street, the Western central bank cartel, and neoliberal
politicians. They would be showing the Global South that financing
prosperity and improved standards of living by saddling future
generations with debt was never meant to work in the first place.

Until
then, a storm will be threatening our very lives -- today and tomorrow.
The Masters of the Universe/Washington combo won't give up their
strategy to make Russia a pariah state cut off from trade, the transfer
of funds, banking and Western credit markets and thus prone to regime
change.

Further
on down the road, if all goes according to plan, their target will be
(who else?) China. And Beijing knows it. Meanwhile, expect a few
bombshells to shake the EU to its foundations. Time may be running out
-- but for the EU, not Russia. Still, the overall trend won't be
altered; the Empire of Chaos is slowly but surely being squeezed out of
Eurasia.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, "The Roving Eye," is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News, the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He argues that the world has become fragmented into "stans" -- we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled "Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War". His latest book is "Obama Does Globalistan."

About Me

B.S. in Physics, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1960 Ph.D. in Physics, Brown University, 1966. Fellow, American Physical
Society. Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fellow, American Ceramic Society. Member, Geological Society of America, Research Physicist at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Washington, DC,
1967-2001. Fulbright-García Robles Fellow at Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1997. Invited Professor of Research at Universités
de Paris-6 & 7, Lyon-1, et St-Etienne (France) and Tokyo Institute
of Technology, 2000-2004. Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and
Engineering, University of Arizona, 2004-2005. Consultancy: impactGlass
research international, 2005-present.
Winner, one national and two international research awards and honored
by Brown University with a "Distinguished Graduate School Alumnus
Award." Author, 198 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books, Principal Author of 114 of these.